The Effect Of Differing Natural Brick Fillers On The Strength Of Bricks
The purpose of our experiment was to determine which natural filler, grass, wood chips/shavings, or sand, would offer the greatest shear strength in bricks. To do this, we first made bricks out of each of these materials with clay, flour, corn starch, and molasses. We then placed them in a microwave, an oven, and under a heat lamp so they would dry. When they were fully dried, we tested the shear strength using our setup. After collecting the data, we analyzed it. We ran the ANOVA test, which is a t-test with 3 sets. The ANOVA test proved that the samples all came from different populations at a confidence level of 99%. The average mass that bricks with, sand, grass, and tree shavings, held were 14.2kg, 11.2kg, and 9.0kg, respectively. We partially proved our hypothesis since the sand bricks held the most mass. However, contrary to what we predicted in our hypothesis, the bricks made with grass held more mass than the bricks made with wood shavings. These results allow us to draw the conclusion that for most purposes, sand bricks offer the best building materials of the three brick types represented in our experiment. They provided the greatest strength and durability of all the bricks. Conversely, grass bricks provided a plausible alternative when sand does not naturally occur in the native environment of the builder.
Research Done By:
Jonathan Lee
L'Anse Creuse North
Byron Hotchkiss
Lake Shore
Warren Consolidated Schools